Rational Radical

2 Responses to “Updates on the Scummy…”

1. admin Says:
   June 7th, 2009 at 10:00 pm

   Head of eHealth Ontario leaves job amid scandal
   The embattled CEO of eHealth Ontario Sarah Kramer has left the crown organization.

   The decision was mutual, said Steve Erwin, press secretary for Health Minister David Caplan.

   Kramer has come under heavy fire from political opposition over the past couple of weeks. The Star reported yesterday Kramer’s fate was unclear after new revelations concerning her $114,000 bonus – which she received five months after starting her job as eHealth boss. The revelations about the bonus, which comes on top of her $380,000 annual salary, were heaped on weeks of controversy over rich consultancy fees at the agency, executive perks and untendered contracts.

   In a statement released today, Caplan said he was “acting immediately” on a request from the eHealth board of directors to revoke Kramer’s appointment as president and CEO. “This decision is an important step to restore public confidence in the agency and its mandate of modernizing our health care system,” Caplan said in the statement.

   Yesterday, in a letter to Caplan, the board said a change in leadership was needed in order for the organization to move forward. “Both the board and Ms. Kramer feel that a change in leadership is required to restore public confidence in the organization’s ability to move our important mandate forward,” the letter stated.

   Girl told that Hitler was ‘good but bad’

   WINNIPEG – A young girl at the centre of a child custody hearing told police in an interview her parents believed non-white people should be killed or forced to leave Canada. The girl also uses racial slurs to refer to people from Pakistan and China, and says she is worried about them. “Some people from Pakistan, they carry AIDS … and they could kill you,” she says in a 40-minute videotaped interview recorded the day she and her younger brother were seized from her parents in March 2008.

   She adds that her parents think Hitler was a “good but bad man” and that her parents supported the fact that Hitler killed many people. Pressed gently on her own beliefs, she says she doesn’t believe minorities should be killed, but thinks they should leave Canada. “Not kill, but go back to your own country.” At one point in the video interview, the girl points to markings on her skin and says: “It means Hi Hitler or Hail Hitler.”

   The girl’s language pales in comparison to what social workers and some relatives have already told the court. One social worker testified the girl calmly described how black people should be killed with a ball and chain. Two workers testified the girl told them she had been exposed to violent racist videos and frequently used racial slurs.

   The children’s mother denies teaching the children to hate minorities, and accuses social workers of feeding words to them. The mother has not participated in the custody hearing. She now lives outside Manitoba and is hoping to make it to court when the hearing continues at the end of June. The girl’s stepfather, who is also the biological father of the boy, is arguing he has a constitutional right to teach his views to his children.

   MPs ink secret deal on cash
   OTTAWA – Members of Parliament have exempted the cash and benefits they receive from political parties and riding associations from restrictions and public disclosure under the House of Commons conflict-of-interest code. The move was unanimously approved without a vote in the Commons after committee hearings conducted entirely in secret. The closed-door decision counters a trend toward more accountability in government and should have come under public scrutiny, a democracy advocate says.

   It could also erode the independence of backbench MPs, making them more beholden to party bosses instead of voters, adds Democracy Watch chief Duff Conacher. All four parties approved the change Thursday after a House rules committee and a subcommittee held eight meetings on the topic that were closed to the public.

   Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson, responsible for helping MPs avoid conflicts of interest, gave evidence and advice at four of the meetings. But her comments will remain a secret, along with all statements and comments MPs made during the in-camera hearings.

   Conacher – who says he gave an invited opinion at one of the meetings on condition that this portion remain open to the public, and then answered questions in camera – criticized Dawson for taking part in the secret deliberations. “She’s a watchdog,” he said. “A watchdog does not meet behind closed doors with the people they watch.”

   A committee report on the change says Dawson advised MPs to replace a blanket prohibition on gifts related to their positions, other than those they receive as a normal expression of courtesy or protocol, with a more relaxed test that is nonetheless aimed at preventing improper influence. The code requires MPs to disclose all gifts and benefits valued at more than $500.

   The MPs changed the code to specifically exclude from the definition of “benefit” money that is not repayable as well as property and services obtained from a political party or riding association. The amendment means there is no limit on money or goods and services that MPs may receive in that context, and no obligation to report it on a public registry maintained by the ethics commissioner. “Political parties and riding associations oftentimes pay, or reimburse, registration fees, travel expenses and hospitality to members for their participation at political events,” the committee report says. “These benefits cannot, under any circumstances, be seen to compromise their personal judgment or integrity, and, therefore, should be excluded from the definition of `benefit.’ ”

   Conacher argues the change means MPs might be able to build up campaign war chests under the radar between elections – a practice Parliament itself ended several years ago with the elimination of blind trusts in riding associations. He says the change could also lead to the kind of MP expense abuse that has rocked the British parliament. “If you look at the whole scandal of what happened in Britain, this will allow parties to give all those kinds of gifts … to MPs in secret,” he said. “It will allow the parties to buy off MPs in secret and make it much more likely that they will toe the party line instead of representing voter concerns.” Conacher noted that 30 to 60 per cent of federal parties’ coffers come from taxpayers through deductions, reimbursements or public allowances.

   Dawson did not respond directly to criticism that she took part in the closed hearings, but confirmed that she earlier raised concerns with MPs about difficulties interpreting the former ban on gifts.

   While MPs exempted monetary and other benefits from their own conflict-of-interest code, an Elections Canada spokesperson said these benefits must be disclosed during an election campaign if they are given to a candidate personally and the value exceeds $500. MPs defended the secrecy of the hearings, saying they wanted to discuss personal experiences with the conflict code.

   ‘Tainted’ jury panels get the boot
   Two sets of potential jurors totalling 240 people have been dismissed at Barrie’s courthouse amid allegations that the Crown is using improper means to vet them.

   Defence lawyer Mitchell Worsoff applied this week to have two “tainted” lists of these potential jurors scrapped on the basis that the candidates were subject to secret background checks that violate not only their privacy but Canadian law.

   As late as Thursday, Crown prosecutor Karen McCleave was not conceding that the lists are improper. “The Crown in no way concedes the merit of the application,” McCleave told Superior Court Justice John McIsaac.

   McCleave did consent to the withdrawal of the two lists, but only, she said, because the issue had been the subject of published reports.

   The lists contain personal handwritten comments on some potential jurors.

   Beside their names are such handwritten notes as: “suicidal in 2001,” or “Ongoing neighbour dispute – neighbour shot his cat” or “Witness to parent’s domestic dispute. Dad is a drinker and assaultive to her mother.”

   Other notations indicate that some prospective jurors have Highway Traffic Act convictions or have been charged, but not convicted, of other offences.

   Many names had the note “ok” beside them, presumably signifying that they are acceptable.

   Attorney-General Chris Bentley criticized the use of such lists last week and vowed that the wide-ranging background checks would stop.

   Yesterday Brendan Crawley, a spokesperson for the Attorney-General’s ministry, said such lists are no longer in use. He did not respond to a follow-up call and email asking why the Barrie Crown was openly using them this week.

   “The AG should come clean on how widespread the practice is,” Frank Addario, president of the Criminal Lawyers Association, said yesterday.

   “If it is infecting trials, the public has a right to know. I don’t understand the obsession with secrecy, but it looks terrible.”

   Under Canadian law, unlike in the U.S., all that either side is supposed to know about potential jurors is their name, place of residence and occupation.

   “They’re using the American system through the back door,” Worsoff argued in his submissions to the judge. “There has been illegal conduct.”

   The arguments to scrap the lists were the subject of a temporary publication ban, requested by the Crown, which the judge lifted yesterday after opposition by the Toronto Star and other media outlets. The Crown at first sought, then abandoned, a total publication ban on the proceedings.

   The Crown also sought to seal the lists of jurors, so the public or media could not examine them, but the judge rejected their application.

   “I am satisfied that the ends of justice would be better served by access to these records as this would permit the `penetrating light of public scrutiny’ to be shone on the prosecutorial practices undertaken in vetting these jury lists,” McIsaac ruled.

   Critics have blasted the use of such wide-ranging background searches as an invasion of privacy. The issue is the subject of an application in the Court of Appeal in the case of convicted murderer, Ibrahim Yumnu, who was tried in Barrie, and has led to one mistrial in another Barrie case.

   Worsoff said it was only on May 28 that he received two lists with 120 names each of prospective jurors for the trial of his client Ravi Badhwar, who is charged in the highway death of trucker David Virgoe.

   He said he was at a disadvantage because he has no way of knowing what notations like “ok,” which is beside many names, mean. “I don’t know if it means they are good for the Crown.”

   In the face of media reports on jury vetting in Barrie courthouse, on May 26, John Ayre, Ontario’s deputy assistant attorney general, sent out a memo to all Crowns reminding them that if a criminal record check is requested, it should be for only indictable offences.

   “In no case should any other information be requested.”

   As late as May 8, Michael Minns, deputy Crown attorney in Simcoe County, had sent out to local OPP detachments and Midland police the two jury panel lists for the Badhwar trial, which was to start June 1.

   Minns asked for police to advise of any who had criminal records. “It would also be helpful if comments could be made concerning any disreputable persons we would not want as a juror,” he wrote.

   But under Section 20 of the Juries Act, the Sheriff must keep lists “under lock and key” until 10 days before jury selection. In this case, however, the lists were in the hands of the Crown at least 24 days before. “How can the Crown have access to the list on May 8 or the day before?” Worsoff asked. “The sheriff’s office has acted unlawfully.” Worsoff argued that the checks are an invasion of privacy.

   What’s another word for euphemism?
   Judging by the local newspaper that serves the rural area of Pennsylvania where I live, hunters no longer shoot and kill deer: They harvest them. “Harvest” is the latest euphemism for killing, and it’s applied not just to the culling of the deer herd but also to the killing of bears, bobcats and other predators.

   In his speech on national security before the American Enterprise Institute last month, former vice-president Dick Cheney complained of the “emergence of euphemisms (under the Obama administration) that strive to put an imaginary distance between the American people and the terrorist enemy.” Instead of being at war with terrorists and other “killers and would-be mass murderers,” we were now involved, Cheney dismissively noted, in so-called “overseas contingency operations,” a catch-all term adopted by the Obama administration in place of the “war on terror.”

   Yet for all of Cheney’s posturing about the allegedly milquetoast euphemisms of Obama, he persisted in invoking “enhanced interrogation” for methods of torture that have been prosecuted as war crimes by the U.S. But the former vice-president did put his finger on a problem: Our collective acquiescence in the temporizing – the terrorizing, even – of our language.

   Cheney himself continues to stare unblinkingly at euphemisms such as “enhanced interrogation methods,” which cloak the reality of bodies being slammed against walls. Our eyes glaze over when we see the repetition of terms such as “collateral damage,” an overused military euphemism that obscures the reality of innocents blown to bits or babies buried under rubble.

   Perhaps our temporizing began right after World War II, when the Department of War was folded under, and rebranded as, the Department of Defense. Coincidentally, just before this occurred, George Orwell penned his classic essay “The Politics and the English Language” (1946). It remains telling:

   “(P)olitical language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: This is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: This is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: This is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.”

   This last point is essential, and it also explains the purpose of the phrase “enhanced interrogation.” How many Americans in 2002 would have favoured a “war on terror” if our government plainly admitted it was using torture to terrorize suspects?

   As President Obama famously said during the 2008 Presidential Campaign, “Words matter.” But, following the lead of the former vice-president, Obama also made the political choice of citing “enhanced interrogation techniques” four times in his speech on national security last month, though at first reference he did qualify the phrase.

   In the same speech, Obama demonstrated his own linguistic dexterity, coining the phrase “prolonged detention” to cloak his proposal of indefinite imprisonment of “enemy combatants” without trial. Prolonged detention: It sounds quaint, like a few days of after-school punishment, instead of what it could become: open-ended confinement to a gulag.

   We all recognize that we live in an age of public relations, propaganda and advertising. Post-modernism as well as deconstruction seemingly support the malleability of meaning and the lability of language. Even so, whether you’re Dick Cheney or Barack Obama, changing the words does not change the reality. Instead, our linguistic gymnastics not only tortures our language: It cripples our thinking and pollutes our souls.

   The most blatant example of this pollution occurred in Nazi Germany, as brilliantly exposed by Victor Klemperer in The Language of the Third Reich. Klemperer shows, for example, how the word “fanatical” was redefined under Nazi rule from a pejorative to a desirable trait. This and similar linguistic barbarisms, Klemperer concluded, acted as “Poison which you drink unawares and which has its effect.”

   Let’s stop drinking the poison. Let’s stop references to “enhanced interrogation” or “overseas contingency operations.” Let’s speak plainly of torture and of killing, whether during hunting season in the forests and fields of Pennsylvania or during combat in the plains and mountains of Afghanistan.

   At least then we won’t be hiding behind the false camouflage of euphemisms to justify our blood sports, and our even bloodier wars.

2. Lily Says:
   June 8th, 2009 at 3:44 am

   It was definitely a good move for Sarah Kramer to quit now. Unfortunately, I think it will take a lot more than a change of leadership to restore public confidence. That is really deplorable because our health system is already badly flawed, and this only adds to the problem. I agree with you RR, Kramer will probably receive a good package on the way out, and that’s a slap in the face of all the tax-payers, considering that the fact she received unfair bonuses is at the root of the problem. It’s a never-ending story!!
   About the young girl at the centre of a child custody in Winnipeg… well, this story boggles my mind. Once again, it looks like it will end up being all about “he said, she said” between the family and the social workers. I have no doubt that there was a need for intervention in this case, but I cannot help wondering what will happen next. At this point, what can really be done to limit the damage? If this young girl has been brainwashed by her parents, I appreciate the fact that social services intervened. However, how will they treat the girl? Where will she end up living? How exactly do they plan to reprogram her?
   I think there is a real fine line here, and it will be difficult to restore basic values in this young person without destroying her attachment to her family. When this case gets to court, I wonder what will be the prime concern for the judge. In that sense, as much as I agree that the situation was alarming and required intervention, I’m also reserved about the outcome.

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